Be Watchful for Signs of Readiness
by SomewhereApart
Summary: For Peanut Week's "Mother Know's Best" prompt on tumblr: Robin's daughter talks about her mother, and the family motto.
You know, one of my earliest memories was watching my mother take off her makeup. Well not my mother, exactly. I wasn't her child, technically, but I didn't know that then. All I knew was that she was the woman who healed my skinned knees with a wave of her hand and a kiss, the one who made snowman pancakes with powdered sugar and hot cocoa in the winter.

There were three of us kids, and technically - I mean, if we're talking by blood here - she wasn't any of our moms, but that never mattered. My oldest brother always called her Mom, but she'd raised him his whole life, so of course he did. To my other brother she was Mama, for as long as I can remember, even though she wasn't technically his mother either. He was Dad's, like me. But it didn't change what she was to us, y'know?

Our family isn't like other people's, but it's ours, and it's good. And also messy, and weird.

I am my father's daughter by blood, my mother's by choice, so Dad still can't live down the fact that my first word wasn't "Dada," or "ball," or "no" (that was word number two). It was "Mama." I always told him it served him right for naming me Imogen, but he just sighed and said it was a family name, and _Your mother agreed to it, too, y'know?_

I guess nobody's perfect, huh?

Still, when I was little, I thought she hung the moon. Now that I'm older, I realize her loving me the way she did was even more impressive than I'd thought. Considering how I got here.

Yes, I am awfully chatty today. I guess I just got tired of staring at the walls.

What was I saying?

Oh, yes. One of my earliest memories was watching my mother take off her makeup. Soaking a cotton pad with something from a blue bottle and wiping off shadow and mascara, undoing red lips. The soap she washed her face with was black, I remember that. Not just the bottle, the soap itself. It was black, and smelled like… warmth. Something herbal, maybe. I never knew what, it just smelled like mom's soap, y'know? When I was four she would let me stand at the vanity with her and wash my face while she did.

"Careful around your eyes, Ginny," she would warn. "Don't get too close; it'll sting."

After the soap came the night cream, cool and soothing - and expensive enough she rarely shared more than a drop of it, bopping it on the tip of my nose with a smile.

My mom, she had the most beautiful smile…

When I was little, I thought she was perfect. She did everything moms were supposed to do. Read bedtime stories, and stayed up all night when I had croup and couldn't sleep without coughing, and glared daggers at the people who were mean to me for reasons I couldn't understand yet.

I would, eventually. I would learn a lot of things. Some things I'd wish I could _un_ know. But before all that, before the truth, I learned the simple stuff.

My brothers taught me how to climb trees. My father, how to shoot an arrow. My mom taught me how to turn the itching, buzzing energy inside me into candle flames and wards of protection. I miss that, here. The magic. I mean, not just because being able to throw a fireball at your ugly mug would make me feel better now and then. Stone's cold, y'know; a fire would be nice, is all I'm saying. Or a real pillow, or, I don't know, an issue of _Batman vs. Superman_ to pass the time. Something.

You're not really a conversationalist, if you know what I'm saying.

Anyway, yeah. Mom taught me about magic.

But first she taught me how to paint red on my toenails, how to plait braids into my hair. We were outnumbered - three to two - and she used to wink and whisper, "We girls need to stick together."

When I was nine, she taught me to make snowman pancakes. I thought that was really the bee's knees. I was a woman now. I could make the pancakes on the big griddle in the big house. It took me most of a year to figure out how to make them without burning them or leaving them soggy in the middle - cooking's not really my thing, that was mom's - but I got it eventually. It was all in the timing, right? Don't flip too soon, don't wait too long. Be watchful for signs of readiness.

Man, I could really go for some snowman pancakes right now. You think you could make that happen for me, Iago? No?

Figures.

Did you ever see the big house, or have you always been here? I know some of you moved in after we'd all left. Or they'd all left, I guess. I was born there, in the Other Land. Six months premature and lived to tell the tale - benefits of having a magical aunt on a time crunch.

We came back here when I was fourteen. Someone struck a diamond with an axe, and the whole world began to crumble. It took Mom, and me, and my… other mother…, and aunt Em and aunt Mal - and a very special wand - to open the portal to save our people. Some of our people.

A lot of the town didn't make it, but we got as many people out as we could. I got my whole family, so I guess that's lucky. The last of it I ever had, considering I ended up here three weeks later. Pretty shitty luck, right?

And my family, y'know, they're pretty special, like I said. They have this thing, about always finding each other. Not my mom and dad, but aunt Snow, and uncle David. Aunt Em. Even my big brother, they always say this stuff - and Mom always rolls her eyes - but they say that our family, we always find each other. They really believe it. Hardcore.

I believed it, too. Before. But it's been about a year now, and here I sit. My big brother once found his mom - both of them - in a weird make-believe magical land he'd never been to in under a week, so I don't know if I should be impressed at your hiding skills or really fucking disappointed in the family for the fact that I'm still sitting here.

For a while I thought… well, there were days, sometimes, where I thought it was because of who I was. Who I came from. My mom, she loved me, but she kept secrets. Everyone did. I didn't even know, y'know, until we needed to open that portal. I mean, I knew I wasn't Mom's, no way this hair came from her. Seventh grade biology pretty much took care of that. I'm recessive genes all over the place. So I knew my "real" mom was someone else, but I just thought… I don't know. I guess I thought it was before she was with Dad. Maybe she was dead or something. They didn't talk about it much. Not in front of us. People looked, and made comments, but when your family is made up of royalty and bandits and orphans, you start to sort of expect that stuff, y'know?

But then they needed her, and I saw her for the first time. I don't know where she'd been. Jail, they said. She'd killed people, and done other stuff. And Dad, he looked at her like I'd never seen him look at anyone. Like just being in the same room as her disgusted him. And I was hers, like so totally hers, her hair, her eyes - I'd thought they were dad's, the blue, but mine are lighter than his. I'm like her frickin' mini-me, and there she was again after however long rotting in a cell.

Huh. Like bio-mother, like daughter, I suppose. I just realized that. Funny. Is this supposed to be karma, then?

Anyway, there wasn't really time for explanations or stories, but my brother, he's like thirty now. I mean, not quite, and not then, but he's older. And he wasn't just a kid when it all happened, so he knew. Mom and Dad were busy getting everyone to safety and reclaiming their castle - again, apparently - and trying to wrangle this bitch back into captivity. No easy task with a Mills woman, from what I hear. So they had plenty of time to brush off the questions. Later, they promised.

Mom always told me patience was important, but I was just about fucking fed up. Besides, she's never been particularly patient either.

So Henry told me. He said he figured I was old enough.

My other - the woman who - the one I look like, she really hurt my family. Like, she _lived_ to hurt my family. Which is probably why I'm here, right? I mean, kidnapping's a hell of a way to show someone you care, there's a real Mother Gothel thing going on here, so all I can think is she doesn't really care so much about _me_. She just really wants to hurt my mom again.

So I thought for sure they'd come here, they'd come get me. Right quick. I'd chill out for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then that would be that. And then the time passed, and passed, and passed, and I thought maybe they figured, well, they were finally rid of me.

The way my dad looked at her, I wondered a little bit how he could ever have looked at me the way he always did. I look just like her, and he hated her. So maybe he was glad not to see me anymore. But Mom, she really had it rough. Raising a kid that wasn't hers - no problem for her - but one that was made just to hurt her? And by her own sister, y'know? Not that they were ever close, from what I understand, but still, it's the thought that counts. And with her soulmate, no less.

So at first I thought maybe they were glad to have an excuse to have me gone.

But I've had a lot of time to think here, Iago, a lot of time. And my oldest memory of my mom is her taking her makeup off, and letting me use the black soap, and smiling as I rubbed that one dot of cold cream into my cheeks. She had the greatest smile, you know, my mom, and she never smiled anywhere else as much as she did at home. With her kids. She loved her kids, all of them, blood or not.

And we had to stick together, us girls, because we were outnumbered, and she loved the hell out of me, my mom. I was fourteen fucking years old before I ever had an inkling of a reason to think she didn't. I was born from a lot of pain, and they never once let me know it. It never once showed enough for a kid to catch on.

My mom, she taught me about a lot of stuff. Makeup remover, and Dutch braids, and how long to wait for a pancake to flip, but the most important thing she taught me, she wasn't even here to help me figure out.

And that's that family is family, no matter where it comes from or how. And our family, it's a little different, and a little weird, but all that stuff Mom rolls her eyes at? The always-finding-each-other crap? It's true.

And you know what else was really true? You have to know when to wait. When to flip. And how to look for signs of readiness.

No, I'm not asking you for pancakes again, I'm saying that when there are crows flying in and out of a tower window that only has food three times a day - and you know I don't share - maybe you boys in bronze could not be such numbskulls and get a little bit suspicious.

But then, if you had, I wouldn't be able to say this:

Hey, Iago?

Turn around.


End file.
